A Wedding Invitation by Alice J. Wisler Read Free Book Online

slurping carry us back to Dovie’s. Dovie and Beanie talk about some 1950s movie about milk shakes and a lovers’ quarrel.
    I think of Mom and feel a tinge of guilt that she’s alone in Falls Church, so far from this happiness that I feel she could use. Yet I remind myself that Dovie always extends the welcome mat to her. Mom chooses not to accept, claiming she has a new life in Falls Church and wants to put her past in Winston-Salem behind her. I heard her tell Dad once that her childhood was not pleasant due to her parents’ fighting and dysfunction. Now, as a woman in her sixties, she prefers to stay away from Winston and its many reminders. Dovie, on the other hand, tells me that Winston-Salem is the only place she feels at home. “Why,” my aunt has been known to repeat, “Winston is where I feel the most alive and feel God’s hand on my life.”

eight

    I trail behind my aunt, sleep still in my eyes. The early service at her church this morning was lengthy because there were several prayers for a youth team preparing to travel to Haiti. After the prayers ended, I had to force my eyes to stay open. I longed for my grandma’s Life Savers, always a sure way to keep me from dozing off in church. Now there’s no time for a nap; we’re preparing for a butterfly release.
    In Dovie’s fenced-in backyard are two matching wooden sheds—their only differences being the color of the roofs. Dovie rattles a set of keys as three hens scurry from our path, making their way to the apple tree. These clucking birds all have names—Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner—affectionately given, but not with the intention of actually consuming any of them for the meal they were named after. Dovie purchased them solely for their egg-laying capabilities.
    As the noisiest hen pecks at a tray filled with grain, Dovie unlocks the first shed with the sloping red roof. Gently, the door creaks open. We enter, shutting the door behind us.
    The interior is damp and cool, with peculiar odors. A tiny window about two-feet square lets in rays of late morning sunshine. This hatch, as she calls it, holds a crudely built wooden table that is crammed with branches sticking out of dirt-filled pots. Large green plants spray out over the floor. In the early spring, this is the hatch that holds lots of about-to-change caterpillars. The larvae stick to these branches until they’re ready to become butterflies. Today there are just a few late bloomers. One she studies and wonders aloud why it has not broken from the silky sack and tried its wings.
    “Are you too cozy inside there to even try to come out?” she asks it as one would question a child. “Come out, now, honey. It’s a fascinating world.”
    The next shed is a colorful wonderland. This is where Dovie keeps the monarchs that emerge in the previous shed. She takes them out of their first home and places them in this hatch—the same size but with more greenery and better sunlight. I quickly close the shed door and step into the beauty of life. Dovie stands with her fingers outstretched, and within minutes one of the insects has landed on her thumb. She smiles at me and then motions for me to pick up the wire cage on the left side of the room. Slowly, trying not to disturb anything, I reach for the tightly woven cage, open its tiny door, and place it on the table in the center of the shed. Dovie covers the butterfly with a hand and swoops it into the cage.
    From the time I was small, Dovie taught me the cycle of the monarch butterfly, but all I fully recall is that each female lays her eggs on the underside of the milkweed leaf. After the egg is laid, the caterpillar is born, and basically goes through his short days and nights eating leaves and pooping. Dovie’s explanation included that the caterpillar was then ready to pupate and form a chrysalis and spin a silky thread around him until it was time for him to emerge as a butterfly. When I was small I thought the words were puke and crystal ,